i have just finished watching another war movie: americans vs japanese around manila. i enjoy war movies but i think, the older i am, the more of an anti-war “freak” i become.

sure, there is political need for war. not the obvious one – protecting the interests of the nation. war is very good in one thing: once you send a bunch of workers and peasants to some hell on earth place, once they are back they are so happy and content with anything that for sure you can keep on doing stupid stuff for a while longer (if you are a king or president or whatever).

however this is not so obvious as presidents and parties and kingds change. this again is a game, as th real major change occures. once lower ranks of people are sent to war, preferably for few years, whole generations of these people are drained emotionally and their interest and sharpness for change back home is much weaker. this system has sustained all major powers for a long time and has almost reached perfection with modern warfare and strategy.

in essence war is a great political distraction, always was and always will be. it keeps the masses quiet, more or less, and allows greater stability of a system. if you think that a certain political system was not stable before the war, i am sure that i would be even more stable if there was no war. keep in mind this is all relative to the point of view of the political system which engages in war.

anyway… now that basics of political purpose of war are explained we can move on to more crucial elements.

war is usually based on a conflict of nations. if there are no nations than they can easily be invented with some advertising and pr (american, spanish or most civil wars). basically political powers divide people into groups and nations are easiest because its kind of hard to organize a war between bookkeepers and bakers or similarly uncentralized groups (messing around with these unefficient groupations is left to union wars, football team wars etc which are always much small than national wars).

since people start looking at other people as same but as different than it is easy to get them to do anything. if i do not see some x nation guy as a human but as only as x nation guy than i can kill him. he is not like me, so he is an enemy, and it makes it ok to kill him. but it is a crime to kill someone who is like me, who is part of my group.

my idea of war, since i spent some time in my life close to it, is always that if i am made to kill someone i might as well kill whoever i making me ge close to war. i am unable to make a difference between my group and x group. i just do not feel that. i figured out that ability not to see these groups but just recognize whole military as an enemy, which is trying to put you in a dangerous situation, is crucial for worldwride war diminishing process.

also this kind of thinking can be indoctrinated as it is just as natural as fighting for your own group.

both feelings: extreme individualism (fuck you all) and extreme nationalism (i will die for my nation) are natural to people. it is just a matter which one of these will be fed.

also these feelings, or instincts, can not be generalize so much, as each of them consists of millions of variations, and for any manipulation to work, it has to be super personal and individual, but that is not so hard. just as military staff has always been very skilled in manipulating their men and women into masohistic and suicidal behaviour so it is possible, probably easier, to do the same to create a total oposite behaviour.

maybe with some good candy. :)

anyway, i will continue thinking about this…

maybe one day i will just be an anti-war activist. sounds like a cool job.